Guachisnay: anatomía de un presunto anglicismo

Abstract

Abstract One of the ways that English loanwords can enter mainstream Spanish, perhaps the least common of them all, is via regional dialect. An Anglicism can be initially confined to dialect use and later make its way into the mainstream colloquial lexicon, thus technically becoming an internal loan. This may well be the case of the originally Andalusian word guachisnay, itself perhaps ultimately derived from English what’s your name? Drawing on a database of over one thousand citations taken from various sources, this article aims to examine the presumed etymon of the word and build up a full picture of the range of meanings it has in contemporary colloquial Spanish, both in Andalusia and elsewhere. It is concluded that the rich polysemy of the term is the result of its frequency of use and that, no matter what its true origin is, some of its spelling and pronunciation variants clearly show that speakers consider it to be an Anglicism.